I’ve recently joined Twitter (you might as well too – there’s no escaping it) and in looking at the Top 100 Twitter users I found Wil Wheaton. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s probably the only Will in history that spells his name with 1 “l” (is his full first name Wiliam?) I wouldn’t have thought it was the actor that was in all of my issues of Bop from 1988-1992. I mean, not that i bought Bop for Wil Wheaton – I was after the New Kids on the Block posters so I can have more of them than my best friend Michelle Newman.

OK, I’m getting off track. And showing what a dork I was/am, as I’m attending the NKOTB concert next Monday and I might faint from excitement because I think I have floor seats.

So anyway, I found Wil Wheaton’s Twitter page, which lead me to his blog and one of his more current posts about auditioning. I started audibly shouting “Yes! Yes! Yes!” upon reading this:

“This is something I tell actors all the time: you have to find ways to enjoy auditions, and as hard as it is, as counter intuitive as it is, you just can’t make success or failure about booking the job. You have to make success or failure about enjoying yourself. You’ve got to enjoy the process of creating the character, preparing the audition, and then giving the people on the other side of the desk whatever your take on the character is. You absolutely can not go in there and try to give them what you think they want. The way you stand out, and the way you enjoy it whether you are hired or not, is to take the material, prepare it, and find some way to make it your own. Even if you don’t book the job (and the ratio of auditions to jobs is something like 20:1 for successful actors) you’ve been creative. Casting people will recognize that, and even if you’re not right for this particular job, they are more likely to bring you in for other parts, because they’ve already seen you take a creative risk.”

I auditioned regularly and professionally for 9 years, and it took me 7 to realize this – and Wil Wheaton to put it into words. Once I stopped trying to be like every other twenty-something girl there (and believe me, there were sometimes hundreds of us in the same place), both in the way I sang my audition songs (“Don’t you sound pretty!”) and the way that I looked (“Don’t you look pretty!”) I started getting work. Or if the work didn’t come, the callbacks did.

I intentionally found an audition outfit that would make me stand out: a strapless A-line dress that had polka dots a la candy buttons, and a matching headband. I found a dozen audition songs that would showcase my big, powerful belt/mix and make ‘em laugh (hopefully). When I was asked to read sides, I’d approach them with, “How can I make this mine?” It was almost like my eyes would shift into funny-focus and I’d be able to pull out the moments that weren’t there on the page.

One memorable audition had me called back for an elderly male Asian gangster. Obviously, they were typecasting. I worked on the sides overnight and kept wondering how far I should go with it. When I walked into the callback, I was told – unprompted – to take it as far as I wanted and they could always pull me back.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Of course”, they said, not knowing what they were getting into. I was gonna get into some fun.

I got on my knees and stuck my teeth out, and made sure to squint and sound like Kim Jong Il in Team America: World Police. I was the most offensive, and ridiculous, and funny that I could remember being (which made it more offensive). I half expected the linoleum floor to part and swallow me whole when I was finished.

But I left the room and the auditionees that were lined up outside the door had their eyes wide open, semi-gaping at me. They asked what I did in there to have the auditors roaring. They didn’t hear me, but they heard the laughs. And a few hours later, I got the call to join the cast. As an elderly male Asian gangster:

Now don’t get me wrong – there were times I walked in, did my weird stuff, and walked out callback-less. I’ve been given a raised eyebrow and a “Thank you?” and I’ve been told that my audition was kick-ass – but “We just don’t know what to do with you. You won’t be able to blend in.” And sometimes I get a call from that same person a few months later to be in a new show, where they do know what to do with me.

Whether you’re an actor, a dancer, a painter, a singer, a sculptor, a writer – find your voice. Stand out from the crowd. It might not always get you hired, but it’ll get you remembered. And use that audition time, or writing time, or sculpting time to feed your art and your soul. Do it for you and any time that you spend creating won’t ever be seen as a waste of time again.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Happy Hooplah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.